nicole stuff

the-faraway-here-and-now:

 the most important thing i’ve learned in 2011 came in the form of an experience i had at an airport. i think.
unless i’m forgetting and it occurred somewhere else, but the fact is that if it didn’t occur in a starbucks in amsterdam, it may have occurred in a peet’s coffee and tea in harvard square, or at a coffee bean & tea leaf in los angeles, or at a caribou coffee in the midwest. but i think it was at an airport. 
but anyway….my eureka moment happened somewhere that was hot enough to purchase an iced coffee.
 
the iced coffee came with a straw.
 
the straw, as it often is, was wrapped in white paper. like so:

 
 
and as i have done for my last 30 some-odd straw-using years, i banged the straw in it’s wrapper against whatever coffee-shop surface was available.
 
and like so many times before, the straw developed a fatal crack. 
 
a slit through which my iced coffee would escape. 
 
a slender crack; a vile, bleeding little crevasse which would make the experience of drinking my iced coffee, well…compromised.
not immediately, of course. but at the moment where i’d drunk enough, and the vile crevasse of the straw took in air when went to suck down my caffeinated potion….mayhem.
irritation. and of course….do we destroy the environment, and therefore our peace of mind, by chucking the fucking straw and taking a new one? do we just suffer….?
 
this wasn’t the point.
 
the point was….i realized, in a eureka-like moment, that i’d never considered, for a fleeting moment, the idea of changing my straw-wrapper-opening habit.
 
it just never occurred to me as an option. i’d never really considered becoming the Sort Of Person who would carefully unwrap the straw with two hands instead of banging it violently against a hard surface, forcing it open like the PETALS OF A UNRIPE FLOWER. 
but it wasn’t my fault…was it?
i’d never made the conscious choice to be a Straw Destroyer. 
i just…..was one. like being white. or female. or raised in the suburbs of boston by middle-upper class parents. 
 
STRAW DESTROYER. 
 
i felt a huge combination of emotions at this point.
 
shame.
 
worry.
 
shame.
 
worry.
 
a lifetime of lost moments. 
 
all of those frustrated brain synapses colliding every time i would feel broken-straw-frustration throughout childhood, teen-hood, and most of my adulthood.
 
(commercial break; HERE is a site to read some other first world problems sourced from twitter, including my personal favorites:
“My cousin made fun of me because I thought the Arab Spring was a band.”
“I can’t fit all of the gift cards I received at Christmas into my wallet.”
and
“Nobody believes me when I describe my cocaine habit as ‘retro’.”)

 
those little moments were fleeting, weren’t they?
my discomfort, my frustration…small. eensy-weensy.
but all those moments never added up to anything. 
it never occurred to me that there was an escape from my picayune problem.
 
we’re all crazy. 
 
we do, as humans, pretty much all fit that definition of insanity where we do things over and over and over again expecting different results.

i suppose we’re always on a learning curve. 
from the first moment we decide never to touch the hot stove again (it hurt) to deciding never to slam on the brakes on our bike thus causing a gaugeable/causal physics phenomenon of flipping over the handlebars (it hurt) to deciding never to fall in love again (it hurt). 
 
sometimes it just doesn’t seem like any fun to learn. or change something.
but i don’t think the success is in the change. it’s in the noticing.
 
the shame came from realizing i’d never considered an alternative.
 
the worry came from knowing that i didn’t want to consider an alternative, because i like being sloppy. and i don’t want to be a careful adult.
 
the revelation came when i realized that the moment at hand was significant because my brain, you see, is working the right way. i’m noticing. i’m detached enough, in the good way, to see my own ridiculousness. the yoga and the meditating have a lot to do with this.
 
so whether i choose to remain a Straw Destroyer or not, i’ll be making a conscious decision one way or another.
 
or at least more conscious than….the year before.
 
and that was the most important thing i learned in 2011….
 

DESTROYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!

-AFP (http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/15054136958/the-most-important-thing-i-learned-in-2011-by-amanda)